A Life Ascending

It pretty much makes my month when an outdoors movie comes across my desk, and after watching it, I get to give it my “not ski/climbing porn” stamp. In the first few minutes of “A Life Ascending,” you see Ruedi Beglinger, owner of Revelstoke, British Columbia, hut-skiing company Selkirk Mountain Experience, anchor a rope to a snowblower on one side of the hut so he can rappel down the other side and shovel feet of snow off the roof. That’s when I realized that this would be a movie more about a life than about relentless pursuit of the gnar. Beglinger, a ski mountaineering guide, was leading a group of 20 skiers in 2003 when an avalanche ripped loose and

killed seven of the skiers. “A Life Ascending” documents Beglinger’s life as a guide, from snow science, to running a business, to raising his two daughters in a helicopter- access-only hut in the backcountry of the Selkirks. And, of course, the ever-present chance that he might die at work, or have a client die on a trip — and how he dealt with the avalanche deaths in 2003, which, coupled with another avalanche less that 20 miles away that killed seven more people 12 days later, drew negative media atten- tion. Director/producer Stephen Grynberg’s first feature-length documentary is a good one, just in time for ski season. www.alife- ascending.com